Charlie Porter is an album that is musically and structurally reminiscent of those iconic M.C. Escher prints: dizzying ziggurats, waterfalls to some/nowhere and eye-teasing figure-ground images. Porter, with the able assistance of his local colleagues -all ace musicians -has created an intriguing, intelligent recording that simmers and boils over with ingenious original compositions, stellar musicianship, and a marvelous sense of puck.

"Prologue" has Porter's unaccompanied trumpet bellowing a five-note Miklos Rosza-like fanfare before he bursts into a fierce display of precision playing. Symmetries prevail on this superior session as each of the subsequent tracks adds another musician. After the apogee, "A Lover Scorned," the pattern reverses with the album closing with Porter's solo trumpet book-ending with the original fanfare plus. This production effect is slick but no gimmick.

"Mel Smiles" is an upbeat rhythmic duel-to-the-death with drummer, Mel Brown and his swashbuckling brush and set work. The duo is fascinatingly inventive. Porter's improvisational rhythmic vocabulary is a jazzman's Webster's throughout. "Rondo for Sticky" is a Cajun-flavored strutter with Porter testifying over Brown's drive and Lakey's bass-boom below.

Porter, a Juilliard grad and Paris Conservatoire attendee, is a technical phenom. The guy has a gorgeous sound, complete command of his horn, and vast creative juices to fuel that vehicle. While creatively his own man, he is obviously heavily influenced by